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The concept of time is a product of the quest for and identification of order, a recognition that events occur in meaningful sequences. Time sense, experiencing the passage of time, seems to be a universal attribute of Homo sapiens. Organizing populations or communities according to time is a special attribute that separates the human from the nonhuman animal. Marking time and making calendars are perhaps the most ancient of learned sciences.

Imagine a self-reliant group of 200 to 300 people subsisting in the Amazon rain forests, the Sahelian desert of East Africa, or a farming village in a Himalayan valley. Without electricity, internal combustion engines, or wheeled vehicles, life is governed by the rhythms and order of the rising and setting sun, the waxing and waning moon, the movement of stars in the night sky, the changes of seasons, monsoons and drought, movements of animals, and planting and harvest. Individual internal rhythms seem to synchronize with these external rhythms: sunrise and sunset, waking and sleeping, menstruation and the lunar cycle, birth, growth, puberty, reproduction, aging and death. Traditional village lore is crowded with a time sense that uses natural events as markers: harvest moon and hunger moon; solar solstices; the length of days and nights; the migratory flights of birds; and the seasonal changes in plumage of birds, fur of animals, and the foliage of vegetation (1-4). Adjectives rather than numbers describe time. Villagers seem to see and feel time, not to count it. Village ritual life is shaped by the sequence of events, not preset schedules; time is rhythmic and sacred. Village time is intimate and experienced, not projected or abstract. The traditional time horizon does not extend beyond the annual cycle; notions of a 21st century or a third millennium are beyond pastoral ken and interest (1).